While it’s absolutely true that there isn’t necessarily a “one size fits all” approach to software development in that every project is unique unto itself, there are certain best practices that you can follow to help streamline development as much as possible. Doing so will not only allow you to achieve a far faster time to market than what would otherwise be possible, but it will also enable you to end up with a higher quality finished product as well. Getting to that point, however, requires you to keep a few essential things in mind.
Breaking Down Tasks in a Manageable Fashion
By far, one of the best ways that you and your teams can streamline the development process involves breaking down tasks into a series of smaller and more manageable “sub tasks.” This technique goes by many names, with iterative development being one of the most common.
With this process, features are designed, refined, and tested in a series of consistent, repeated cycles. Every time another iteration takes place, more features can be added – leading to a fully functional piece of software that can be delivered to end users much faster than you would via a more traditional approach to software development.
As stated, one of the major benefits of this approach is that it allows you to arrive at a better quality end product at a faster rate than you would otherwise be able to. In the late 1990s and early 2000s in particular, a piece of software would essentially need to be more or less 100% finished before this roll out could occur. By breaking down tasks in a more straightforward fashion, different parts of the application can be worked on simultaneously and features can be deployed individually when they’re ready.
This also brings with it the added benefit of opening up the process to far more flexibility for sudden necessary changes than you would otherwise be able to take advantage of.
Embracing Ephemeral Environments
Another great way to help streamline the development process involves the use of what are called ephemeral environments. This can be invaluable, as it allows teams to not only increase their productivity, but also optimize their own processes, and deliver better quality work in a fraction of the time it would typically take.
Think of an ephemeral environment as a type of temporary development environment. In terms of functionality, it is intended to mimic a true production environment precisely. But they’re used more for staging purposes. Each environment can be used to work on code from a specific feature branch in isolation, all without disturbing the rest of the work that is going on. This eliminates the types of conflicts that are traditionally present, particularly when it comes to things like testing.
Because code can be worked on and tested in this way before being moved into the main environment, it helps avoid issues in production and allows critical work to be carried out simultaneously by various team members without worrying about creating some type of negative ripple effect along the way.
Employing Flexible Methodologies
Another one of the best practices that you can follow to help streamline the development process involves the use of flexible methodologies, with Agile being perhaps the most prominent example.
As opposed to developing and designing a piece of software as a monolith, these flexible methodologies break the process down into a series of smaller and more manageable chunks as outlined above. They are dedicated to helping people deliver high quality software that works frequently and consistently. So instead of waiting for everything to be completed before essential tasks like quality assurance and other testing can begin, everything is tested along the way.
The major benefit of this is that it brings with it a fast (and predictable) delivery process. With a more traditional approach to software development, if a problem is created today, it might be weeks or even months before it is discovered. At that point, it’s not a “minor inconvenience” any longer – it’s likely an issue that has impacted various feature branches that will also need to be worked on.
Flexible methodologies, on the other hand, allow this testing to begin immediately. This gives teams an invaluable opportunity to stop a small problem today before it has a chance to become a much bigger one down the road.
Additional benefits of this predictability extend to both costs and the schedule of the development process. Overhead is much lower because you’re no longer reacting to issues – you’re being proactive about addressing them. This leads to better estimates that you can provide to your own clients along the way. Because the schedule is fixed, it is inherently more reliable – allowing teams to complete their work in a way that doesn’t just lead to fully functional software faster, but that again gives all stakeholders more actionable information to work from when making decisions along the way as well.
In the End
In the end, there are always opportunities to streamline the development process – both in terms of the larger project itself and with regard to what your teams are able to accomplish on a daily basis. Think about streamlining not as an opportunity to “cut corners,” but to work as efficiently as possible. The closer you are to achieving that goal, the farther along you’ll be towards the type of superior quality finished product that your end users have been waiting for.
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